[LEAPSECS] speeding up again?

[jimlux]

On 6/15/23 10:50 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> --------
> Tom Van Baak writes:
> 
>> Steve,
>>
>>   > We can probably put a lot of the blame onto El Niño
>>
>> That sounds plausible but I'm suspicious of quick and simple explanations.
> 
> I dont think the primary El Niño phenomena involves enough
> mass transport to measurably change the angular momentum.  It is
> mostly just a vertical inversion phenomena, which changes the
> evaporation from the sea surface.  It has far ranging secondary
> effects, but those are mostly orthogonal to the rotation, so their
> effect is also attenuated.
> 
> What I wonder is if anybody has done the angular rotation math on
> major forrest fires ?
> 
> They convert a lot of trees from rigidly rotating surface mass to gasses,
> but I have no idea what the total incinerated mass might be...
> 

pretty small, compared to say, snow or ice.  The ice melting in 
Antarctica and Greenland is much larger mass wise than mass of trees 
burned (and of course, most of the mass stays fixed, the blackened trees 
remain)

If we estimate based on the CO2 release - the wildfires in CA are 
estimated to have released about 127 megatonnes in 2020 along (came 
across this in an article saying it's frustrating, because for all the 
work in green house gas reduction, CA had reduced their emissions by 65 
megatonnes over 18 years)

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-20/california-wildfires-offset-greenhouse-gas-reductions

But only 12/44ths of that is carbon that used to be fixed to the Earth 
surface - so a bit less than 35 megatonnes of carbon. OTOH, there's also 
hydrogen in those plants, etc.

And on a annual time scale, soil moisture is probably a larger mass - 
after all, let's say that the average annual rainfall is on the order of 
50cm everywhere, so that's 1/2 tonne/square meter.  The US is about a 
gigahectare, so 10 terasquare meters, or 5 teratonnes of water.  That's 
quite a bit more than the mass from all those Canadian fires, I suspect.